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Hundreds of cut-out paper letters tell the history of typefaces in this stop-motion animation by Canadian graphic designer Ben Barrett-Forrest.

Starting in the fifteenth century with Johannes Gutenberg's Blackletter font, The History of Typography charts the major innovations in font design up to the present day.

Barrett-Forrest explains the variations between early serif fonts such as Caslon and Baskerville and how they evolved into modern sans serif fonts such as Futura and Helvetica.

Cutting out and animating the letters took Barrett-Forrest around 140 hours over a period of two months, on top of dozens of hours of research and post-production.

"It was fairly tedious cutting out almost 300 paper letters, especially the serif typefaces with their tiny spikes, but it soon became almost meditative," says Barrett-Forrest.

"I feel that I have a much closer connection with each of the typefaces that I addressed, now that I have laboured to create each one."

Originally from Whitehorse in the northern Canadian territory of Yukon, Barrett-Forrest is currently studying multimedia at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He also runs Forrest Media, a graphic design and media production company.

The classically endowed city of Rome attracted the first printers known to have set up shop outside Germany, Arnold Pannartz and Konrad Sweynheim, closely followed by the brothers Johann and Wendelin of Speyer (de Spira), and the Frenchman Nicolas Jenson. The sequence of appearance and production dates for types used by these printers have yet to be established with certainty; all four are known to have printed with types ranging from textur Gothic to fully developed romans inspired by the earlier humanistic writing, and within a few years the center of printing in Italy shifted from Rome to Venice.

guest

No mention of Korean typography in this Eurocentric historical account.

To me, old style, transitional and modern serif faces are not defined by serif weight or horizontal-to-vertical stroke ratios, but by the incremental transition from more calligraphic shapes to more mechanical ones.

Roberto Frau

I was expecting some words about monotype.

Bill

Beautifully done but surely it's 'A' history? ;) Also, there was no need for the cheap shot at Comic Sans. There are far worse typefaces out there.

jaxe

Superb!

OooShiny

Oh my... this interesting video needs new narration. The croaking voice was almost unbearable.